


He Will Take You If You Run (Because He Is The Lord)

by th_esaurus



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Slavery, dub con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-21
Updated: 2013-03-21
Packaged: 2017-12-06 01:17:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/730004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/pseuds/th_esaurus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I cannot take this,” Athelstan murmured, his head hung.</p>
<p>“Why so?”</p>
<p>His feet shifted against the ground, nuzzling pebbles against one another. “Because it means nothing to you.”</p>
<p>Ragnar tied a cord around the cross and put it around Athelstan’s neck, tousled his longish hair. It hung stiffly at his collarbone. “It means enough to you for the two of us, and that is good enough for me.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	He Will Take You If You Run (Because He Is The Lord)

The moon looked like crows' feet, clasping at the chasm of the sky, yellowed and craggy and endlessly far away. Brother Athelstan had not much considered the moon before; the sturdy roof of the monastery kept out wind and rain and whispers, and though Athelstan knew that lunar wisp to be God's creation, as all good things were, it had been so maligned and mangled by pagan myth that he could not help but fear it. These heathen men watched the sun and held their stones up to steal its rays, but only one man, the one named Ragnar Lodbrok, watched the moon just as intently. As though he could swallow it up. As though there were enough space in his throat and belly to eat the whole thing up, cover his tracks in darkness.

 

Sometimes he watched the moon, and sometimes he watched Athelstan. 

 

*

 

They took from him his cross, which was to be sold. Ragnar Lodbrok laughed and said it was worth so little, not even silver or gold, why not let the boy keep it? But it was taken from him all the same, and Athelstan wept, and went freely to his knees, and put his palm upon the dirt of Ragnar's boot. "I would give you my clothes, my shoes, my skin, only let me keep the crucifix, I beg you," he said.

 

"Everything is shared," Ragnar told him, "And I have already claimed you for my own. I cannot rightly ask for more, little priest."

 

*

 

The heathen woman Lagertha regarded him much as a cook might view a poor cut of meat. She complained he could not cook well, and his arms were not strong for fetching and carrying, and Bjorn even could take him in a sword fight. What use was he to her as a house slave? "He is good for errands," Ragnar declared, and even Athelstan found that reaching.

 

"He would do better as an ornament," Lagertha spat, though she smiled at her husband's audacity. 

 

"Then you may look upon him all you wish," Ragnar said, and kissed her on the mouth, and Athelstan turned away so that he would not see the wet slide of their lips, tongues. 

 

They lay together in bed that night, as men and women do, although Athelstan found the phrase strange for the first time. They did not lay at all, but Ragnar sat wide-legged and naked among his furs, and held Lagertha steady in his lap, her back against his chest. She watched Athelstan, as he curled himself into the corner, and the priest did not look as such but neither closed his eyes. He could see just the movement, the candlelight flicker of her body as it rose and fell, and to fix his eyes on some other thing, he read shakily the Gospel he had saved.

 

He read the same psalm four times or more.

 

*

 

Ragnar told Athelstan, on the seventh day, that he did not consider him a slave. Athelstan did not know the day exactly, but wondered if God rested, his eyes averted; for how else could such lies go unsmote? 

 

*

 

Athelstan had a raised bump on his longest finger from holding a quill. Not as much a sight as the older brothers - not that they ever compared, not envious; just, he noticed - some of them had hands as gnarled as turnip roots, ink-stained and twisted. Ragnar had grabbed that hand, one evening, as he set Athelstan to cleaning. "Like it's poisoned," he said. Always some delight in his voice when he spoke to Athelstan. "Shall we cut it off just in case?" No malice in the threat. He did not even wield his knife, just held Athelstan tightly at the wrist. He put his mouth around Athelstan's fingers, sucked up them, playful-like, as though drawing poison from an imagined wound.

 

"It is from writing the word of God," Athelstan explained, eyes low.

 

Ragnar held up his own scarred and calloused hand. His nicks and bruises were from swordplay, smithing, hard labour. "Mine also," he crowed, "My little sacrifices to the gods. We are not so different."

 

"We are very different indeed," Athelstan said, and Ragnar laughed at his panic.

 

Ragnar would laugh with him, and with Lagertha, and sometimes his children, but less so with the man he called his brother. Less still with men he called his friends.

 

*

 

He dreamt of Hell. He dreamt of fires and screams, of ravens and dragons, of men who walked without fear of God, all led forward by a smoke-clouded demon who held up sapphires afore his eyes. He dreamt of Hell, and it looked like Lindisfarne. 

 

*

 

When they sat all together in the great hall, and Ragnar filled their cups to overflow with mead, and boys and men crowded round them to hear of his tales from the West, he always obliged. He would pull Athelstan to his weary feet and have him stand in for monks to be slain, let the younger ones have at him with his sword, pulling them back with a laugh if they got too rowdy. 

 

Athelstan begged to be excused. "Stay," Ragnar told him. "I like your company."

 

Much later, as the priest helped his captor home - or perhaps they helped each other - Ragnar stopped him, and turned him about, and said quite seriously, "Do I hurt you?"

 

"No," Athelstan replied. "No, you did not wound me."

 

"No," Ragnar insisted. He put his dirtied palm flat on Athelstan's weak chest. "Do I hurt you, here?"

 

He did not reply, and wondered if he even could.

 

*

 

Ragnar returned from the Þing held by his lord, and he returned in a quiet rage. His neck was red and his cheeks also, and he had drunk before his return. He was short with Lagertha, shorter with his children, shortest with Athelstan. He could not abide by Athelstan prayers that night, and grabbed him by the back of the neck, and said, "Am I not as good as your god? Am I not? Have I not taken you from your people, made you give up all things, as he does? So why do you worship him, and not me?"

 

He dropped Athelstan to his knees, and for a moment, the priest did not know what to do. He was prostrate, and Ragnar's legs were spread in front of him. His hands came up--his hands started to come up.

 

"I'm going to sleep," Ragnar muttered. 

 

Athelstan stayed upon the floor and stared at his shaking fingers for a long and awful time after.

 

*

 

He whittled a little cross out of birchwood as penance and presented it to Athelstan with all the pride of a child who has counted aloud to ten for the first time in its life. "I cannot take this," Athelstan murmured, his head hung.

 

"Why so?"

 

His feet shifted against the ground, nuzzling pebbles against one another. "Because it means nothing to you."

 

Ragnar tied a cord around the cross and put it around Athelstan's neck, tousled his longish hair. It hung stiffly at his collarbone. "It means enough to you for the two of us, and that is good enough for me." 

 

*

 

Lagertha watched him all evening, as he washed after their meal and fetched kindling for the fire and told parables to the children who laughed as if they were fairytales. She took him outside, where the moon sat bloated and fat - it had cycled sickly and then full again several times since last he thought on it - and told him her husband did not take other women than her.

 

"Does that make him a good husband?" Athelstan asked, then begged her forgiveness for prying. She did not grant it, but instead told him that it did not make him a good husband, but he was one nevertheless.

 

 

Much later, when his God took all the mystery out of things, Athelstan realised the woman was giving him permission.

 

*

 

He dreamed of congress with the Devil.

 

*

 

The heathens had no word for chastity. Athelstan had approximated when he had to, told Ragnar he had vowed to lay with no woman, and taught him the Englisc word for it many weeks later. Taught him the word as Ragnar tasted the insides of his mouth.

 

"Please," Athelstan said, shaking abjectly.

 

"People do not say  _please_  and  _thank you_ to stop a man," Ragnar muttered, lifting Athelstan's ragged shirt above his chest and arms. He left the wooden cross where it was, nestled among Athelstan's sorry bones.

 

All he found he could say was, "Please. Please."

 

*

 

Ragnar Lodbrok watched Athelstan like he sometimes watched the moon. Just as though he could eat the whole thing up.


End file.
